In solidarity with the people of Iraq struggling under foreign
occupation.

Feb 25
11
bodies were found in 5 areas of Baghdad, police said. All were
male and had been shot.

Feb 26
Hundreds of Iraqis are being tortured to death or
summarily executed each month by death squads attached to the
Interior Ministry in Baghdad, the UN`s former human rights chief
in Iraq, John Pace, told The Independent on Sunday.

Feb 27
Violence unleashed by last week`s bombing of a Shiite Muslim
shrine has killed more than 1,300 Iraqis, making the past few
days the deadliest of the war outside of major U.S. offensives,
according to Baghdad`s main morgue. The toll was more than 3
times higher than the figure previously reported by the U.S.
military and the news media. Hundreds of unclaimed dead lay at
the morgue, blood-caked men who had been shot, knifed, garroted
or apparently suffocated by the plastic bags still over their
heads. Many of the bodies had their hands still bound.

Feb 28
Iraqi soldiers found the bullet riddled bodies of 9
people near 2 burned minibuses in Diyala province.

March 1
3 people were killed and 7 wounded when U.S. helicopters bombed
houses surrounding the provincial building in Ramadi according
to Dr Sabah Duleimi from Ramadi hospital.

March 2
The former U.N. human rights chief in Iraq, John Pace, said that
human rights abuses in Iraq are as
bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein.
`Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to
freedom of expression and thought, you were physically … OK,`
Pace said, `But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic
situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone…. It
is certainly as bad,` he said. `It extends over a much wider
section of the population than it did under Saddam. `. Pace,
who spent much of his 2 years in the post in Iraq, visited the
morgue in Baghdad once a week when he was in the city and
regarded it as a `barometer` of the level of violence in the
country. Mr
Pace said records, supported by photographs, came from Baghdad's
forensic institute, which passed them to the UN. The Baghdad
morgue has been receiving 700 or more bodies a month. The
figures peaked at 1,100 last July. `The vast majority of bodies
showed signs of summary execution, many with their hands tied
behind their back. Some showed evidence of torture, with arms
and leg joints broken by electric drills,` said Pace.
Much of the killing, he said,
was carried out by Shia Muslim groups under the control of the
Ministry of the Interior. The killings had been happening long
before the bloodshed after last week's bombing of the Shia
shrine in Samarra.

March 3
Gunmen raided a small town near Baghdad and shot dead at least
25 people. Among the dead were many Shiite laborers gunned down
at a brick factory. Officials said more bodies may be recovered.

An IAEA report said that
an investigation lasting more than three years has not revealed
a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran. The report
from the U.N. nuclear watchdog says Iran is pressing ahead with
uranium enrichment but does not confirm any secret nuclear
weapons development. Mohamed El-Baradei, director general of the
International Atomic Energy Agency, says the agency `has not
seen any diversion of nuclear material to nuclear weapons or
other nuclear explosive devices.`

********************************

Civilians reported killed by
military intervention in Iraq since invasion*:

*This
estimate is only of media reported deaths. A peer
reviewed epidemiological survey (Roberts
et al., The Lancet, Vol 364 Issue 9448 pp 1857 1864)
estimated that in the 18 months following the invasion 100, 000
excess deaths or more have occurred. Violence accounted for
most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces
accounted for most violent deaths. Criticisms of IBC methodology
can be found at
medialens